


i find no peace (and all my war is done)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [162]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Collision of WORLDS in a way, Gen, Gwindor's POV of...events, Haleth has saved the day FOR SOME PEOPLE, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rescue Missions, but...as usual what about Mae, scenery, set during and after Chapter 20 WTHC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21741571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: your eyes: the swans in their ghost forest,where long needles inscribedloblolly pines, are vehement enough. Pastthe channel, early savannah shine prismson grass heads’ fog. Don’t makea deal of it. Sun dogs will yap soon.Pinions may clatter. Your head maystop throbbing. Hold fast.- Jeanne Larsen
Relationships: Gwindor & Gelmir, Gwindor & Haleth of the Haladin, Gwindor & Maedhros | Maitimo
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [162]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

The mountains—this mountain—are wholly different from the lush, maple-clad hills of the east. There, a flagged evergreen would rear its head above its brothers, tall and hardy even near the uppermost heights, and an ocean of foliage would roll about it. Gwindor knew those hills, years ago, when he was a free man with an unmarked back. He has never said as much to anyone living, for to do so would be to awaken the dead.

Here, pines hunched like broken men are the only trees that brave Diablo's cragged crown. Bauglir himself did not try to reach so high. His stronghold nestles among the slipping rock-faces and rough undergrowth, which he has blithely carved and hewn in defiance of nature's hand.

Gothmog's camp, rather, was sensibly built in the flat dell between two clefted foothills. The land around it is grassland of a sort, but not at all akin to the even prairies at the country's heart. Rather, it was dense with shrubs until the slaves rooted them out; arid until fertilized; hard on its unsought masters no matter how they ground it beneath their feet.

If the slave-made road—Gwindor knew two men who died in its making—was followed farther down-slope, the pine trees stretched their arms up and together, making the forest into which he hopes Russandol has fled.

The forest meets another road: Bauglir's secret road down to the forge. And though the forge was a place of yet more bondage, the forest follows the chill splash of a carefree river, out and out. At the edge of the forest the shrubby fields open wider, grassier, the sort of place where horses can run.

_There aren’t enough horses to spare. Gwindor is sick to the pit of his stomach, to the marrow of his bones._

_“Carry what you can,” Haleth ordered. After a moment, the stunned slaves realized that she meant: carry what weapons you can find, carry what food you can find, and otherwise, carry each other._

_Gwindor cannot be the one to carry Estrela. His shoulder will not bear her. Instead, he does what he can to strip weapons from the dead. There are many dead, but most of them were Gothmog’s. Most of them do not have the faces of friends; those that do are equally ugly._

_He must keep himself from turning round and round in circles, looking for Russandol._

“Where is Russandol?”

_He shouldn’t have let the lad go._

“There are two—two children,” Gwindor says, in answer to Haleth’s inquiry. “Missing. He went to find them.” Desperately, he adds, “We could not delay.”

Haleth tilts her head as if considering him and his loyalty, him and that part of his warped old soul that wants to lie down and die—or that simply wants to wait.

“Hmm,” she says. For the first time, Gwindor remembers what Haldar told them. Not only his sister, was Haleth; his _twin_. Almost as young as the boy was, when he—

Not so far from Gelmir’s age.

“He should not have gone alone,” Haleth says, hard.

Gwindor knows what she cannot. “He would not have let anyone go with him,” he answers. “It is dangerous.”

_Dangerous, for one or many. Dangerous, for Mairon’s prey and Bauglir’s favorites._

“Your Russandol is a fool.” She purses her lips. “Come now, or are you a fool as well? We are to keep you safe. No delay.”

_Before the roofs were up, before the women came, Gwindor and Lem and the rest of the slaves who were builders slept on the hard ground they cleared, all but gasping dust by night as well as by day. Gwindor was chosen with a handful of others to climb the tortuous path to thinner, cleaner air. He knew some from his crew had the mountain for tombs; rock-work was like that. It left few unmarred._

_It left many dead._

_There had been too many nights, since they were driven up from the south. Too many nights, and he could not—in the sunshine, bright as it was that long-ago hell-day—_

_Hours passed, like this._

_(He could not remember Gelmir’s face.)_

_The wind roared, dry. The sun burned. It was summer—he was spending another summer under the savagery of the whip. His hands bled already, from his own clumsiness. The day’s labor was still ahead._

_Gwindor climbed like a wretched ant to the hole in the mountain, and there he found no light._

_It is dark inside the mountain, even when lamps are hung overhead; even when windows are chiseled out._

They move more quickly than Gwindor expected. Which is to say: it is still a crawl, choking in the smoke that follows them like a gathering storm. They travel over the makeshift fields, down a road cut through the hills that is wide enough to allow a wagon.

This is Gothmog’s road.

If—if the plan had been as of old, but if the victory was still theirs, Gwindor would have led his fellows in the opposite direction that they now track. Here are a thousand questions that all bear the same, remembered face. Here are two:

Would the forest have saved them? Will it save Russandol?

He is worn, hurt. His hands are burned. There is no red-headed scarecrow to look at him with sad, sea-brined eyes, and ask him if he is well, if he is angry, if he is going to be brave. Belle is carried by one of Haleth’s men. Her eyes stay shut.

Lem is gone. Haldar is gone. Even the children are gone, perhaps, and Russandol—

Gwindor clenches his fists so tightly that his shoulder howls. He quickens his pace, as if each step _away_ does not break him, and draws level with Haleth, who leads her horse by the reins.

“I warn you, Gothmog shoots fast,” Gwindor says.

She does not look at him. “Except when he runs.”

“A man can do both.”

“I know.” Haleth sighs. Her leather coat has a burn-mark along the shoulder, and her right hand, gripping the reins, is wrapped in a bandage stained red. “How many men are at the railroad?”

“I do not know. Some of us were sent there, in my time here. They would not fight us, I think. I—” and he gestures at his shoulder, ashamed. “I was no good.”

“You planned this. You and your Russandol.”

“Yes.”

“It was foolish, but well-done.” She says, looking at him, “Who killed my brother?”

“Gothmog.” Gwindor stares her down as he answers, because only a coward would look away. “It was Gothmog.”

_Russandol has an Eastern accent, an orphan’s loneliness, a thief’s skill. When sleep truly takes him, he looks like a child in the way he tilts his head against his hand._

This is what they find at the railroad: Haleth’s friends, victorious. They have not burned the shanties to the ground, nor they killed anyone, that Gwindor sees. Gothmog and his men are simply…not there.

“They fled,” says one square-jawed young man with stiff, wild hair and a long rifle over his shoulder. “Cowards.” He pauses, looking with furrowed brow over Haleth’s straggling band, who have dragged on nigh half a day to reach uncertain freedom. Gwindor thinks the man looks like he is counting. “What…”

“Freemen,” Haleth says. “If you’ve taken what you can from this place, we must be on. Snow’s coming.”

Gwindor sees a grey ribbon of cloud in the east. Almost nothing, yet. Almost nothing. The day is not even half-cold.

“Fingon has gathered what food and medicines they kept here,” the man says. “It wasn’t much. I’ll fetch the rest. They’re scouting.”

Gwindor takes his leave, heavy-hearted. He has drawn the best map he can, in words and with a scrap of charcoal that one of Haleth’s followers had tucked in her vest. He does not speak to anyone he does not know unless he must. Every face is Russandol’s face.

Russandol told him he would meet him at the edge of the forest in a day’s time. A _day_.

Gwindor has with him what Haleth was willing to give, and what he was willing to accept from her. A coat for himself, one for his friend; a gun, a waterskin, a little food. It has been a day of easy victories for other people.

His hands are still stained with Lem’s blood. Lem’s body has not even the dignity of a grave.

Neither did Gelmir’s.

The mountain seems neither near nor far. It simply is. Gwindor is a man gone mad, but he has been that—and has _known_ that—for a long time. Would a man with all his wits have refused Haleth’s help, not once but twice? Would a man with all his wits chase another man’s death-wish and call it survival for both of them?

What warmth there is sets with the sun.

Somewhere, Russandol lives. Beneath the coming clouds, above the unforgiving earth: he lives.

Gwindor has to believe that.


	2. Chapter 2

_"Look after her," Gwindor said, blunt and stupid. They stared at him with women's patient incredulity for men's folly. They had been tending to her tirelessly. He knew that._

_Still, he knelt by her side--Belle, his oldest friend living. His only friend here. Her eyelid fluttered like the wing of a candle-drunk moth. Her dark eye, bloodshot, met his for a bleary moment._

_"Russ..." she breathed. "Russandol."_

_Gwindor's heart had not died beside Gelmir's. He felt the unbearable creature keening its beats in his breast. "I'm going to fetch him," he whispered. "You rest now. I'll be back before you know it."_

He is not where he ought to be when the sun goes down. Indeed, he must double back to the shelter of a patch of trees--for Mairon or other men, who really do carry torches as well as eyes, have every reason to be crawling the land below Diablo.

Gwindor might have begged a horse off Haleth, but he feared two was too many to ask, and it would have to be two or none, to carry him and Russandol and the children.

In the end, he is slower but less visible on foot. He eats a little before he sleeps, and weeps a little too; he has never thought himself a soft man, only a hard and hollowed-out one. He was wrong, and it was Russandol who showed him he was. Russandol, despite his beaten humility, _does_ love to be both contrary and right.

It is hard not to think of two boys, four eyes and four hands--but not all in their right places.

He used to keep Haldar at arms-length, because Haldar's thin-voiced confidence was achingly familiar.

Russandol was like no one at all, at first. Therefore, he got in.

The children love him. Belle loves him. Gwindor loves him, and swipes at his damp eyes with the sleeves of his borrowed coat.

When he sleeps, he dreams of blood, but that is nothing new.

_Turgon and Fingon and the others whose names Gwindor did not have time to learn dashed about, organizing the dazed, bedraggled slaves like business-like shepherd dogs would see to a storm-tossed flock._

_Gwindor was at once made obsolete. He was glad of that; he would not take the horse, which seemed too much of a request, but he would take the absence of demand. He could not be needed by anyone but the lost ones._

_He set out with his hand wrapped around the gun, testing his newfound steadiness._

He wakes to find that his nose and ears and hands are cold. The coat kept him largely warm and dry, but dew fell on the knotted grass and the spiny shrubs alike. He can see its droplets glistening in the pale sunlight.

_Back and forth, rocked Mairon's knife. Back and forth, while the blood sprayed and his knee pressed to spine and his hair hung over his face. While the screams belonged to two brothers, he cut through the bones of Gelmir's wrist._

"Fuck," Gwindor says aloud. His neck is stiff and the heavy, freezing air makes his shoulder hurt like poison. He is not complaining of that; he is not even cursing his memories.

He is looking at the white hands of fog that grasp the forest-clefts along Diablo's base. Fog as dense as snow.

Russandol, like Gwindor, must also be blind.

"Nothing for it, Red," he mutters, checking to be certain that his gun is in working order. "Nothing for it but to keep the little ones close. I know you found 'em. You bastard, you've given me faith."

This isn't grassland that can be easily crossed, like the flat pastures of the south or east, but Gwindor is used to it from his time with Gothmog. Gothmog expected them to till it, to grade it, to treat it like he treated them.

His shoulder gives him a mite more trouble than it should. The exertion of the day before, combined with the onset of misty chill...that's done him in.  
He can't risk a gunshot, not here, but he does move the gun in his hand, practicing an aim he might need.

_The forest._ It brought them back together, weeks ago, when Russandol was the one worrying whether Gwindor. At least, it looked like worry on his thin, beautiful face.

It felt like worry, when he fell into Gwindor's arms.

Gwindor can see more forest than fog, now. More forest than fog, and he'll take that as a blessing. A sign that the redhead-scamp is near.

_He tore his own voice out. They whipped him until he could not stand. One arm dangled at an angle worse than the limp fall of a corpse._

_"What would you like done with him..._ monsieur _?" One of the whiphands asked, his words dropping, far away and careful, like separate stones._

_The bloody, narrow boots minced into Gwindor's red line of vision, silent on the knotted grass._

_The voice, very quietly and scissored at the edges by the blades of a foreign tongue, said, "He lives."_

Gwindor hears the river.

At first he doubts himself. Are his ears betraying him? Is he deceived by the wind? Nevertheless, he moves towards the sound. Soon enough, he can see it as well, a glossy thread answering the winter-silvered sky.

The fog has been devoured by daylight. Russandol, bless him, must be so grateful.

Gwindor increases his pace. A swift run would wind him, but at a measured trot he can cover a good deal of ground without exhaustion. He weaves back and forth, back and forth, because a moving target is harder to strike, and all the while, the trees grow.

He will never understand--and after Gelmir, he never really tried to--why wickedness gives some men the unshakeable delight that it does. All the same, he wondered, sometimes, why they hated someone as kind as Russandol.

He follows the riverbed at a little cautious distance. He can mark its entrance into the wood. He is breathing hard, but now he cannot slow his pace.

Cannot--risk--

Everything that happens is inextricable. There is no Gelmir, without Mairon's knife.

There is no Russandol, doubled-over and desperate as the children scamper ahead, without Mairon on his heels.

Gwindor's gun is in his hand. Gwindor runs, and the children flounder across the broad water-basin, and Russandol slumps and stumbles.

Sinks.

_They drowned me_. Just a boy, gasping and struggling, as though being clean would kill him.

_'Course they did._

Mairon moves like an animal, shivering through the air around him as if his weasel body has achieved an arrow's speed.

Gwindor lifts the gun. Haleth's gun, his gun. He fires and the shot goes wide.

They ruined his shoulder when they killed his brother, and now they'll kill his friend.

" _Russandol_!" Sticks screams, because the drowned boy isn't rising, isn't moving, and Mairon is almost at the water's edge.

Gwindor sees her hands flailing at the wrists. For a moment, for a wide shot, it's all he sees.

He dashes in and seizes her under one arm, the screeching Frog-boy under the other. He runs back, backwards, and he thought he was watching but he wasn't, because Mairon has Russandol by the hair, Mairon has Russandol by the arms and the throat,

_Mairon has Russandol._

Gwindor roars over the children's cries. Maybe he commands them or maybe he doesn't. Maybe he is calling out Russandol's name. He tries to hold both squirming bodies under his good arm, so that he can shoot again, wide or not--but it doesn't matter because Gwindor's gun is swimming at his feet.

Russandol's face is caught in Mairon's talons. Russandol's eyes shutter closed, as the water pours through his lips. Then they open again, wild even from this many paces away.

Gwindor has never ceased to be a brother.

Mairon does not care for Gwindor, or for the children--yet. He holds quite still in his moment of predator triumph, Russandol trapped in the vice of his arms.

What strength it takes, Gwindor does not know, but Russandol wrenches his face--not away, but _towards_. Towards Gwindor. His wet lips work and gape. 

Sticks beats her fists against Gwindor's keening heart. Frog's fierce little teeth sink into his arm.

" _Go_!" Russandol cries at last, full-throated. The word is no worse than the smile that flares inexplicably on his thin, beautiful face.

The smile is the farewell and the command. Gwindor has two children, four eyes and four hands, to his charge. He cannot leave them; there is something wrong with Russandol, something limp and shaking. He did not lift himself from the river because he could not. It would do no good to wait; that is what the smile means. It answers the fool questions Gwindor did not want to ask; it draws an immovable line in flowing water, bidding them turn their backs on kinder futures, for the sake of any future at all.

What is worst is that Russandol looks happy when he smiles, happier than Gwindor has ever seen him, which _must_ be wrong, _must_ be a lie; yet there will be no chance to tell him that, no chance to say,

_I know you are lying, you bastard, and I won't have it._

Gwindor takes the children, leaves the gun, cuts the hand from the body that would have followed it anywhere, and runs.


End file.
